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Comment by danachow | Hacker News Reader

Frequent monitoring of iron/ferritin levels while on oral iron supplementation is likely not necessary -- barring a genetic disease, you're extremely unlikely to get iron toxicity or overload at instructed oral doses. Periodic monitoring is more to assess a positive response - since if your levels are not going up on supplementation it warrants further investigation.

Oral iron is now recommended given only every other day to avoid GI side effects and there is evidence that the response is just as good to more frequent.

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I think this is true, with the caveat that men don't have periods like women do, so taking iron supplements every day for say 5 years might cumulatively add up for them.

But otherwise normal/daily supplements for a few months probably won't be negative and indeed, might even be beneficial for certain subpopulations, like athletes.

The otherwise healthy man with no iron deficiency has no reason to take daily iron supplements for 5 years and therefore no need to monitor iron levels. If they are iron deficient there is some sort of blood loss or underabsorption going on and if and until that is corrected an oral iron supplement is unlikely to cause toxicity. If it is corrected, then iron replacement should only take a few months.

While I agreed, I do want mention that hereditary hemochromatosis affects roughly 1 in 300 people. So of the people reading this thread likely someone will have it.

That’s good news. Oral iron gives me an upset stomach unless I have lots of recent carbs.

Disolving tablets and consuming in liquid form is an alternative.

My partner takes Megafood's "Blood Builder" iron supplement which seems to work well and avoids the GI symptoms.

Try Ferrochel! Normal ferrous sulfate absolutely destroys my stomach and gives me tarry shits but I can take Ferrochel on an empty stomach without any side effects.

Iron gummies are a thing, and helpful to a family member. Multi-vitamin gummies too, which might have enough iron to keep levels up depending on the condition.

Listen to this person who is likely an actual MD

This frustrates me. Right in this very thread are many accounts of people saying that doctors won’t listen to you and will do only the minimal amount of work possible to get you out of their office, and that you should do your own research. Then like 3 comments down are posts like yours, sarcastically putting down people sharing results of that same research.

So which one is it?

Perhaps we are reading different comments, but the parent doesn't read as sarcasm to me. Something else to be aware of is that the people responding here as doctors do not make up even a small fraction of a percentage of the practising doctors, so although there is lots of interesting information being shared, using that as a way of refuting people's complaints is not exactly useful.

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